Peer to Peer: ILTA's Quarterly Magazine
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/1544492
106 A rtificial Intelligence is rapidly moving from assistive tools to autonomous systems capable of executing complex tasks across enterprise environments. As major technology providers bring agentic AI into legal workflows, corporate legal teams face a familiar but higher-stakes decision: which innovations accelerate productivity, and which must meet litigation-grade standards of defensibility? History suggests that in regulated environments, architectural discipline matters more than novelty. WHEN BIG TECH ENTERS LEGAL: A FAMILIAR CYCLE The legal industry has seen this pattern before. Large technology providers enter the legal-adjacent space with powerful tools originally built for broader enterprise use. They add legal hold features to collaboration platforms. They introduce search overlays for document repositories. They launch analytics plugins that promise faster review and lower costs. In many cases, these tools genuinely improve productivity. But history shows that when these technologies are tested under litigation scrutiny, not all of them withstand the standards required in regulated workflows. Courts do not evaluate software based on innovation alone. They evaluate it based on defensibility, traceability, and repeatability. We have seen this cycle with search overlays, collaboration add-ons, and lightweight hold functionality. Capabilities that appear sufficient at the surface can fail when challenged on chain of custody, audit completeness, or reproducibility. A NEW INFLECTION POINT: FROM GENERATIVE ASSISTANCE TO AGENTIC AUTONOMY Today, as big tech companies introduce agentic AI systems into legal workflows, the industry is once again at a familiar inflection point. The core lesson remains unchanged: not every powerful technology is purpose-built for defensibility. The question for legal leaders is not whether these tools are impressive. It is whether they are appropriate for regulated tasks. As the Chief Information Security Officer of a B2B software company specializing in litigation ediscovery and data risk management, I spend my days evaluating how emerging technologies alter the enterprise threat landscape. WHEN BIG TECH ENTERS LEGAL TECH: WHAT HISTORY TEACHES US ABOUT AI IN REGULATED WORKFLOWS Trust, Traceability, and Control in the Age of Agentic AI FEATURES BY ANTHONY DIAZ